François Villon in English Poetry: Translation and Influence

226 Pages·2018·42.24 MB·English

by  Claire Pascolini-Campbell

Volume XV
François Villon in English Poetry
Z00 Pasc Book B.indb 1 02/10/2018 16:19
ISSN 2043–8230
Series Editors
Karl Fugelso
Chris Jones
Medievalism aims to provide a forum for monographs and collections devoted to the
burgeoning and highly dynamic multi-disciplinary field of medievalism studies: that
is, work investigating the influence and appearance of ‘the medieval’ in the society
and culture of later ages. Titles within the series will investigate the post-medieval
construction and manifestations of the Middle Ages – attitudes towards, and uses and
meanings of, ‘the medieval’ – in all fields of culture, from politics and international
relations, literature, history, architecture, and ceremonial ritual to film and the visual
arts. It welcomes a wide range of topics, from historiographical subjects to revivalism,
with the emphasis always firmly on what the idea of ‘the medieval’ has variously
meant and continues to mean; it is founded on the belief that scholars interested in the
Middle Ages can and should communicate their research both beyond and within the
academic community of medievalists, and on the continuing relevance and presence
of ‘the medieval’ in the contemporary world.
New proposals are welcomed. They may be sent directly to the editors or the
publishers at the addresses given below.
Professor Karl Fugelso Professor Chris Jones Boydell & Brewer Ltd
Art Department School of English PO Box 9
Towson University University of St Andrews Woodbridge
3103 Center for the Arts St Andrews Suffolk IP12 3DF
8000 York Road Fife KY16 9AL UK
Towson, MD 21252–0001 UK
USA
Previous volumes in this series are printed at the back of this book
Z00 Pasc Book B.indb 2 02/10/2018 16:19
François Villon
in English Poetry
Translation and Influence
Claire Pascolini-Campbell
D. S. BREWER
Z00 Pasc Book B.indb 3 02/10/2018 16:19
© Claire Pascolini-Campbell 2018
All Rights Reserved. Except as permitted under current legislation no
part of this work may be photocopied, stored in a retrieval system,
published, performed in public, adapted, broadcast, transmitted,
recorded or reproduced in any form or by any means, without the
prior permission of the copyright owner
The right of Claire Pascolini-Campbell to be identified as the author
of this work has been asserted in accordance with sections 77 and 78
of the Copyright, Designs and Patents Act 1988
First published 2018
D. S. Brewer, Cambridge
isbn 978 1 84384 514 0
D. S. Brewer is an imprint of Boydell & Brewer Ltd
PO Box 9, Woodbridge, Suffolk ip12 3df, UK
and of Boydell & Brewer Inc.
668 Mt Hope Avenue, Rochester, ny 14620–2731, USA
website: www.boydellandbrewer.com
A CIP catalogue record for this book is available
from the British Library
The publisher has no responsibility for the continued existence
or accuracy of URLs for external or third-party internet websites
referred to in this book, and does not guarantee that any content on
such websites is, or will remain, accurate or appropriate
This publication is printed on acid-free paper
Z00 Pasc Book B.indb 4 02/10/2018 16:19
Contents
A Note on the Poets and the Poems vi
Acknowledgements viii
Introduction 1
1 Then and Now: The Legend of Villon in the Middle Ages and
in Modernity 16
2 Villon and Swinburne: Finding and Singing Villon 32
3 Villon and Rossetti: Poetics of Strangeness 57
4 Villon and Pound: Modernity and the ‘Mediaeval Dream’ 85
5 Villon and Bunting: Prison-Writing and Parody 114
6 Villon and Lowell: Imitation and the Visible Translator 141
Conclusion 163
Appendices 183
Bibliography 196
Index 211
Z00 Pasc Book B.indb 5 02/10/2018 16:19
A Note on the Poets and the Poems
This book focuses on translations of the medieval French poet François
Villon by five high-profile Anglophone poets writing in Britain and the
United States in the nineteenth and twentieth centuries, namely: Alge-
rnon Swinburne, Dante Gabriel Rossetti, Ezra Pound, Basil Bunting, and
Robert Lowell. Villon is, of course, a popular subject for translation into
English and there are many poets to choose from amongst his heirs. The
rationale behind the current selection is three-fold. First, the poets under
discussion give a chronological view of the vogue of translating Villon,
their texts spanning a one-hundred-year period from the earliest, rhymed
translations of his work in the 1860s to freer, postmodern imitations in
the 1960s. Second, at least four of the five – with the possible exception
of Bunting – are major literary figures whose translations resonate both
within and outside of their periods. Swinburne, Rossetti, and Pound in
particular have played crucial roles in bringing Villon to the attention
of successive generations of Anglophone poets. Finally, the five poets
have also been selected because of the extent to which they knowingly
respond to one another’s versions of Villon, serving to demonstrate how
the process of Anglicising this medieval French poet has been fuelled as
much by collaboration, as by competition.
Each chapter includes detailed studies of how the poets named above
have reacted to Villon, as well as comparative analyses of their transla-
tions. I have been guided by their preferences in my focus on Villon’s
shorter, lyric poems as opposed to the fabric of the Testament. Indeed,
the same poems are selected again and again for linguistic transferral and
the five poets engage with the following texts in particular: the ‘Ballade
des dames du temp jadis’, the ‘Regrets de la belle Heaulmiere’, the ‘Ballade
pour prier Nostre Dame’, and the ‘Ballade des pendus’. These, as well as
other lyrics from the Testament and Poésies recur throughout the anal-
ysis. On the other hand, less time has been spent on the Lais, Villon’s vital
precursor to the Testament having escaped sustained translation by any
of the poets under discussion.
Z00 Pasc Book B.indb 6 02/10/2018 16:19
A Note on the Poets and the Poems vii
The book, then, gives a snapshot of Villon’s oeuvre as translated into
English by a specific group of poets. For readers wishing to widen the
lens, a comprehensive list of English versions of Villon composed during
the period covered by the analysis is included in Appendix 1.
Z00 Pasc Book B.indb 7 02/10/2018 16:19
Acknowledgements
I am grateful to Chris Jones and David Evans for their unwavering support
and enthusiasm for this project. I am also delighted to acknowledge the
help of Michael O’Neill and Emma Sutton, whose insights contributed to
the shaping of this book. In addition, I would like to thank my publishers,
and Caroline Palmer in particular, for their input and advice. Thank
you, too, to the anonymous reader for their intellectual generosity and
rigorous edits.
I owe a special debt to my family and to my husband, Tom, who have
supported me at every stage of this project.
I would also like to offer grateful acknowledgements for permission to
reproduce the following copyright material: “A Prayer for My Grand-
father to our Lady” from LORD WEARY’S CASTLE by Robert Lowell.
Copyright 1946 by Robert Lowell. Copyright © Renewed 1974 by Robert
Lowell. Translated and reprinted by permission of Houghton Mifflin
Harcourt Publishing Company. All rights reserved.; “Ballad for the
Dead Ladies” by François Villon, translated by Robert Lowell from
COLLECTED POEMS by Robert Lowell. Copyright © 2003 by Harriet
Lowell and Sheridan Lowell. Reprinted by permission of Farrar, Straus
and Giroux.; “UNE BALLADE DES FEMMES PERDUES” by William
Faulkner. Used by permission of W. W. Norton & Company, Inc.
Z00 Pasc Book B.indb 8 02/10/2018 16:19
Introduction
François Villon, fifteenth-century versifier and alleged
denizen of the Parisian criminal underworld, haunts English poetry
like a restive spirit. Perhaps only Dante is comparable among other
medieval European poets for the extent to which his oeuvre has navi-
gated linguistic and temporal boundaries: like Dante, Villon becomes
many different poets in his poetic afterlife through a process of transfor-
mation and absorption. First revived by the Pre-Raphaelite and Aesthetic
poets in Victorian England, his appeal has extended to Modernists
and Postmodernists in the British Isles and North America alike, and
his influence reveals itself in the work of some of the most canonical
writers of the nineteenth and twentieth centuries, such as Eliot, Yeats,
and Faulkner. The activity of translation has been key to his posthumous
survival and the number of English versions of Villon has continued to
grow. However, despite the frequency with which his work has crossed
linguistic barriers, there have been few sustained analyses of the resulting
translations and adaptations, or, indeed, of the methods and motivations
of the translators.
Instead, scholars have tended to approach the topic of Villon in
English through the medium of reception studies, and readers wishing
to know more about that interesting topic have many resources avail-
able to them. James K. Robinson, Glen Omans, and Michael Morsberger,
for example, have each examined the surprisingly ubiquitous presence
of Villon in Victorian literature and literary criticism.1 Similarly, in the
introduction to François Villon in his Works: The Villain’s Tale, Michael
Freeman provides a detailed survey of Villon’s reception on either side
1 James K. Robinson, ‘A Neglected Phase of the Aesthetic Movement:
English Parnassianism’, PMLA, 68 (1953), 733–54; Glen Omans, ‘The Villon
Cult in England’, Comparative Literature, 18 (1966), 16–35; Michael Morsberger,
‘Villon and the Victorians: The Influence and the Legend’, The Bulletin of the
Rocky Mountain Modern Language Association, 23 (1969), 189–96.
Z00 Pasc Book B.indb 1 02/10/2018 16:19